1999 mugshot of Whitey Bulger's bloated coatholder that was supposed to run last week. This snapshot was taken on the day of Weeks' arrest in 1999, that is to say, about two weeks before he started ratting out everyone he knew to the feds. Overnight, his moniker in Southie went from Kevin Squeaks to Two Weeks. During the final weeks of his freedom, he was obviously drowning his sorrows in Twinkies.

Kevin Weeks: “We killed people that were rats, and I had the two biggest rats right next to me.”

FLEMMI, on the Creed of the Winter Hill Gang: “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

And you’re dead. You’re not going to last long in a real prison, you bully, you coward.

I heard you’ve told some of the guards down at Plymouth you would have killed me for sure but you were concerned about blowback on your brother, who by the way didn’t show up one single day at your trial.

First you were going to blow me up with plastic explosives you got from one of your crooked FBI agents. Then you sent out Kevin Weeks with a rifle.

Your edge was always that you had the cops, and you had the pols, and the rest of us didn’t. It was a machine, as Joe Murray used to say. He couldn’t go up against the machine and neither could I.

Who was I going to tell that you were looking to cap me? As you told extortion victim Michael Solimondo, you owned the FBI, the state police, the BPD. It was like a 1930s Warner Bros. movie, only it was the 1980s, and it was real.

So I had to drive home a different way every night. I stopped making appointments — never wanted anyone to know where I was going to be at any specific time. But I still had to drive by the liquor store, with the pols’ signs in the front window. They were proud of your endorsement. After all, you kept the drugs out of Southie. And you stared at me as I drove around the rotary. Glared right through me. You wanted to kill me for the crime of telling everyone what you and your family were.

One time, on a windy night, I was watching TV when suddenly a tree branch brushed against the window next to me.

It startled me and I dove for the floor. My wife asked what was wrong. “Nothing,” I said. No need terrifying everybody else in the house.

The cops told me later they used to drive by my house around 3 every morning and shine the spotlight around the bushes out front. I hadn’t told them anything but they’d figured out for themselves that I had a problem. I appreciated the gesture.

People sometimes ask me now, why didn’t I get a gun? The answer is, what good is a revolver against a machine gun? Jackie McDermott, my old friend from Lowell, was asked the same question by the Lowell cops when Winter Hill started moving in on him. “If they wanna get you,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what gun you got, they got bigger ones.”

They got Jackie. They didn’t get me.

What did your brother say about you? You were “just the toughest guy.”

You were the “toughest guy” all right. At least as long as the other guy didn’t have a gun.

But then, you didn’t want any real men working for you, did you? You ratted them out — Howie Winter, Johnny Martorano — or you killed them off, like Tommy King and Paulie McGonagle. And speaking of Paulie, I’m tired of hearing about this love of your life, Catherine Greig.

She was married to Bobby McGonagle. First you killed his brother Donald, and then you murdered Paulie. But that wasn’t enough. The next Christmas, you called the McGonagle home and told Paulie’s 11-year-old son Sean that his father wouldn’t be home for the holiday. He asked who was telling him this.

“Santa Claus,” you said.

Boy, you were a regular Jimmy Cagney. The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter. And then, a few years later, you told the kid you were thinking of using him for target practice.

Catherine couldn’t have cared less. What a lady!

I hope you lose it when you’re sentenced this morning, Whitey. Tell that judge what you really think of her. Go ahead, make our day, all of us you didn’t get around to killing. You know who we are, and we know who, and what, you are. Do we ever.

Goodbye Whitey. You’re not a legend, you’re a stain.

Order Howie Carr’s new book on the Whitey trial, “Ratman,” at howiecarrshow.com.

Howie Carr has written two New York Times bestsellers, is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame and has won a National Magazine Award. He hosts a syndicated daily four-hour radio show, two hours of which are simulcast on Newsmax TV. His website is howiecarrshow.com.